Last week, with the sunroof open and blasting Bob Weir being Bob Dylan at full volume, we blazed past Marina and Sand City along the shore of Monterey Bay.
For years, I've stared longingly at the gunnery range on the west side of Highway 1, thinking the landforms of the dunescape remind me of a supercharged version of Ireland's Inch Peninsula.
Fort Ord is closed and I cannot imagine why the Coastal Commmission (read: Enviro-Nazi autocrats) would not encourage investors to clean up the toxic mess and route a golf course on that stunning linksland.
On the surface, it looks like a "win-win," even for those nasty bastards in the Sierra Club. Only a small portion of the land would be used for golf with the rest cleaned up and returned to public parkland.
Taking the debacle of the Peninsula Watershed as a cautionary tale, the investors would need legal assurances that their expenditures would result in a course, but if it could be worked out, why not?
The land is far more interesting than the proposed Fazio track at Pebble Beach - and just a very short drive down the road.
Personally - and Huckaby is going to squirt blood from every orifice at this heresy - I think both Ford Ord courses are wildly over-rated. Plus, they are on the wrong side of the Highway.
Who controls that land these days? The military? I've no concept, but it is a shame to let it sit and go to waste. Like Kahoolawe (HI), where the government is spending north of a billion dollars to clean up the mess from years of bombing, it would be cheaper to turn it over to private development.
#2. Has anybody ever played that U.S. Navy course in the hills above Monterey? Any good?